Asean Confirms Supporting Surakiart In Bid For Un Top Post

[george]

ASEAN confirms supporting Thai DPM in bid for UN top post

BANGKOK: -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) backs Thailand's bid for the UN top post, Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar confirmed on Monday.

The kingdom is represented by Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, who will contest for the UN Secretary-General post as incumbent UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's term will end at the end of this year.

Dr. Surakiart's candidacy has been endorsed by the 10-member ASEAN and the 48-year-old Thai deputy premier has campaigned for the UN top job since 2004, according to a new report of BERNAMA News Agency disseminated to TNA on Monday.

With only five months to go before the election of the new UN Secretary-General, Dr Surakiart, the sole ASEAN-backed candidate, is pushing to reaffirm the support from member countries through the 39th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, this week, said the news report of the Malaysian national news agency.

He dubbed his campaign the "listening tour", where he traversed the globe to listen to people's views.

"ASEAN would like everyone to know this is an ASEAN candidate so that people will come and talk to me. That is the purpose of the campaign," said the Thai deputy prime minister.

"I've travelled to all the regions in the world, to many countries, and attended conferences so that people can come and talk to me, expressing their views and priorities and concern of the UN, especially the UN reform," Dr. Surakiart was quoted by the BERNAMA news report as saying upon arrival at the KL International Airport (KLIA) Monday.

Dr. Surakiart is in Malaysia at the invitation of the Malaysian foreign minister, who is also chairman of the ASEAN Standing Committee.

He attended a special session with the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Monday night to update them on the progress of his campaign.

Dr. Surakiart will also attend meetings with the foreign ministers of the ASEAN dialogue partners to discuss issues pertaining to the United Nations (UN).

Regarding his edge in filling the post, Dr. Surakiart said the fact that he was endorsed by ASEAN had made him very well received by all the countries he had visited over the past two years.

"I'm now the only candidate that has the back-up of a regional association, that is ASEAN, and ASEAN, as we know, has a lot of friends around the world, and I have been receiving encouragement from the people around the world whenever I travel," he noted.

On his agenda in the UN, the Thai candidate said the management reform of the UN tops his list of priorities.

"The UN would have to be part of the global good governance. The work of the UN would have to be effective, transparent and accountable. The UN must be reformed, particularly the management, in order to be effective," he said.

Another issue of importance is development, as he believes that the world body can play a key role in strenghtening relations between the developed

and developing countries.

Dr. Surakiart also believes that humanitarian assistance programmes and pandemic issues can be better coordinated.

He said the UN also needs to find a better mechanism to work closely with regional organisations, including ASEAN, that deal with their regional issues on their own.

Meanwhile, Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said more than 130 UN member countries had expressed their support for Dr. Surakiart so far.

ASEAN groups Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

--TNA 2006-07-25

[Plus]

Meanwhile, at UN headquarters....

United Nations

Compiled by Bangkokpost.com from Agency reports

A straw poll among the 15 Security Council members has placed South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon and UN official Shashi Tharoor in the lead in the race to succeed Secretary-General Kofi Annan in December.

Mr Ban and Mr Tharoor finished well ahead of Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, agency reports from the UN said.

Mr Surakiart finished a distant third among the four candidates, although his ranking was not immediately available. "The other two hopefuls were far back," reported the Voice of America, referring to Mr Surakiart and Sri Lankan presidential adviser Jayantha Dhanapala.

While the results of this first informal straw poll do give a boost to the South Korean and Indian candidates, diplomats caution that response to all four so far has been, in the words of one, "less than enthusiastic".

Veteran UN watchers say they expect several more candidates to emerge in the coming weeks, and add the man or woman who will eventually be named to head the world body has probably not yet emerged.

In the novel, non-binding vote, the five permanent and 10 temporary council members, in a secret ballot, checked one of three boxes next to each of the four announced candidates: "Encourage," "discourage," and "no opinion."

Each of the four announced candidates has been informed of their rankings and the race is far from over, with other names expected to emerge.

Mr Surakiart is in Kuala Lumpur this week plumping to keep the votes promised to him by the 10 Asean members including sponsor Thailand.

Diplomats, speaking to agency reporters on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the ballots, said Mr Ban received the most favourable votes followed by Mr Tharoor, an Indian novelist and the head of the UN Department of Public Information.

The Korean received 12 "encouragements," one "discourage" and two "no opinions." The Indian followed with 10 "encouragements," two "discouragements" and three "no opinions."

French mission to the UN spokesman Axel Cruau said more candidates are expected, and welcome. "There's a general feeling that four candidates is not enough. Well, it's better if you have many more candidates because you can make better choices," he said.

Diplomats cautioned not to read too much into the results, since a country can nominate a candidate at any time.

Mr Cruau said many ambassadors are hoping the process of selecting a new secretary-general can be completed well before Secretary-General Kofi Annan's second five-year term runs out at the end of December. "We're have always said we are looking for an end of September, beginning of October, roughly around that time, but we'll se if we need more time, the Council will take more time," he said.

Mr Cruau said France gives priority to Asian candidates, but not exclusivity. US Ambassador John Bolton agrees. "What we want is the best person from wherever in the world they might come, and now it's up to candidates from Asia or other regions to make a decisIon to have a member government put their name forward," he said.

.............

It's in the Breaking news section available on the home page

[sriracha john]

Surakiart's UN bid appears to be doomed

The deputy PM gets 7 votes of encouragement, 3 against and 5 of no opinion in an informal poll of 15 Security Council nations

Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai has received a setback to his plan to become secretary-general of the United Nations.

His bid to succeed Kofi Annan looks doomed to failure, according to an informal poll on Monday of the 15 Security Council nations.

Surakiart got seven votes of encouragement, three against and five of no opinion - a major setback for the Thai government, which claimed to have endorsement from more than 130 countries, including China.

According to a Thai diplomatic source, Surakiart was said to be greatly disappointed at the result.

He reportedly lashed out at the foreign ministry, accusing it of not doing enough for his campaign.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Kitti Wasinondha sought to play down the setback yesterday, saying: "Surakiart has learned the outcome of the straw vote and expressed satisfaction with the score. He will intensify the campaign until the final result is announced."

But former Thai Ambassador to the UN, Asda Jayanama, said the government should withdraw Surakiart's bid and permit other Asean members to field candidates, given the poor reaction this week.

Asda said Asean had other qualified candidates, including former Singaporean PM Goh Chok Tong, former Malaysian Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim and former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan, whose names had surfaced in the regional groupings.

"Based on my personal experience, nearly six years at the UN as ambassador, I truly believe Surin Pitsuwan would have done much better than the existing candidates. But the Thai government is not open-minded enough to nominate an opposition party member," Asda said.

The poll result was also a setback for Asean, whose foreign ministers are gathered in Kuala Lumpur for an annual meeting. They issued a statement late on Monday saying Asean reaffirmed its support for Surakiart and noted that the meeting discussed a campaign strategy for the Thai candidate.

The secret poll only gives a faint indication of how the two top vote-winners - South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and India's Shashi Tharoor, the UN undersecretary-general - might fare when the formal election takes place later this year.

Candidates can come forward until the last minute, and a final vote is not expected until for two to three months. A "no" vote from one of the five veto-wielding permanent members can sink a candidate.

In the informal poll, Ban did the best, with 12 nations encouraging him to run, one discouraging him and two giving no opinion. Tharoor was next, with 10 votes of encouragement, two of discouragement and three giving no opinion.

Most diplomats generally agree that the next secretary-general should come from Asia, as part of a tradition to rotate the top job between the world's different regions. The UN chief can serve two five-year terms.

"It's good to have a good slate of candidates, and it's good to have the best possible slate of candidates," said Britain's Deputy UN Ambassador Karen Pierce. "So we respect all those here on the slate at the moment, and we'd expect to see others."

Other possible candidates include Kemal Dervis, the Turkish chief of the UN development programme, and Jordan's Prince Zeid al-Hussein, who is his country's UN ambassador.

In the past, those who ultimately became secretary-general emerged late in the process or hardly even campaigned for the job. That is partly because candidates become the object of intense diplomatic haggling between the five permanent members of the council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.

Annan, chosen in late-1996, was put forward as a last-minute compromise, while the Security Council selected Dag Hammarskjold in 1953 without telling him of his candidacy. Javier Perez de Cuellar was said to be vacationing on a beach in his native Peru when he heard he had been chosen in 1981.

There was no immediate announcement that any candidate had dropped out.

"That's obviously a question for the candidates themselves to decide based on their own assessment of how the vote went," US Ambassador John Bolton said.

The Nation